Hi :-) A nice thread to ponder some free alternatives for all those fine classic DOS programs from "back then" :-)
> Rugxulo: What was DOS most famous for?" > > In office software: Lotus 1-2-3 *and clones), DBase 3 and 3.5, > Paradox, QuattroPro, Javelin, MS Project As Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet, see below in the math realm for some alternative suggestions :-) Same for Quattro Pro by Borland and apparently Javelin by Javelin. I was not aware that MS Project had a DOS version long ago but for alternatives today, maybe this long wikipedia list helps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software Harbour / xHarbour are free DBase Clipper (database scripting language compiler?) clones, a bit bulky afair but portable :-) See also their harbour-project.org web site :-) > In word processing: Brief, Wordperfect, MS Word, Wordstar, > XyWrite, NotaBene, PC Outline A powerful classic style text editor for DOS is SETEDIT, but a few graphical editors are around as well, for example the Nano-X / FLTK GUI-ed FlWriter (port?) by Georg Potthast here www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=11277 or the Blocek unicode editor. See for a better list of editors: www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.Editors > In graphics: AutoCad, Harvard Graphics, Corel Draw, PhotoShop Those do sound very classic indeed... On the other hand, I would do such things with free Linux software now, to make better use of the heavier hardware that exists in 2012 ;-) Examples include Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, QCad, XPaint, LibreOffice Draw, Calc or Impress or for PCBs: Eagle, KiCad or gEDA. For simple-and-DOS, you can try Lxpic, pictview, vga paint 386... www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.GraphPaintCAD > In mathematics: MathCad, Derive, TKSolver Wikipedia says that Spinstop Eureka is a free TKSolver alternative so praise them to keep it online :-) Dan Bricklin has a free-for- noncommercial-use copy of an ancient VisiCalc spreadsheet version online. A DOS port of a "more text oriented" GNU Oleo spreadsheet might be a nice modern alternative. According to Wikipedia, the AsEasyAs spreadsheet for DOS is also arguably free, as a Windows version became free before AsEasyAs vanished... I remember MathCad - both MathCad and the market have changed a lot since the 90s (80s?) days :-) Free alternatives include e.g. Euler (since 1988, newest release 2011, Windows) and FreeMat, a MATLAB clone. Of course the master of free Matlab clones is GNU Octave, which is very powerful and compatible. Wikipedia says it runs with the HX DOS extender (by Japheth, similar idea to Wine for Linux: Runs Windows things in DOS). R is a mighty free stats and mathematical programming and computing environment, but I am not aware of any nice DOS port of R and/or GUIs for that. Still impressive, often better than SPSS. More free non-DOS maths tools include Scilab, GAUSS, Maxima, SINGULAR and many others. > In programing: MASM, QBASIC, MS C, Turbo C, Lahey Fortran, > Scheme, Turbo Pascal, Watcom C, DJGPP DJGPP is a free open DOS port of GNU C/C++ and OpenWatcom C is also pretty open. None of the Turbo things are open, although some were free in the Borland Software Museum for a while. Now you have Freebasic and Free Pascal (FPC) which comes with both a Borlandish-Turboish IDE and a graphical Delphi style IDE :-) And Freebasic has a QBASIC style mode for more compatibility. In a related suggestion: Japheth's (Open)Watcom WASM fork JWASM fork aims at MASM compatibility and NoMySo by Michael Devore is a script to translate MASM / TASM style sources into NASM style. > In utilities: Norton, PC Tools, GEM, DesqView, X-Tree, FastBack There are a lot of Norton / PCTools style file managers out there, e.g. Midnight Commander or Doszip Commander or NDN... Plus lots of collected and collectable tools a la PC Tools. X-Tree in that sense is just another file manager, like e.g. File Maven :-) For GEM, there is OpenGEM, see my other mail. I know nothing comparable to DesqView, but sometimes older but very cool software such as recently 386SWAT and DPMIONE gets open sourced :-) > my case, ACD, CED, Flopper, Fog, List, MoSlo, Nansi, PushD, Wc, Zap. Not sure but... Some interesting similar free utilities: LCD, WCD (change dir, many...), SED (of GNU Textutils / Coreutils, change-and-replace and more), PG (textfile viewer, or try GNU LESS), FDAPM's SPEEDn function for ACPI throttle (cf MoSlo), NANSI itself (and NNANSI, both free :-)), WC word count and WIPE file wiper, many clones available, and the FreeCOM command.com directory handling :-) Eric PS: A nice gallery of mixed DOS app screenshots in Flox' Wiki: www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.Gallery ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
